Islander

SMIQRA: “RGYAĠDŹÉ!”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 042025
 

(NCS contributor Vizzah Harri, domiciled in Vietnam since his first appearance here, has now returned home to South Africa. But the change of scene hasn’t affected his unmistakable and inimitable writing style, as you’ll see from his review of the first album by Smiqra, which is a different guise for the person behind Ὁπλίτης [Hoplites].)

I’ll be honest, I’ve been sitting on this review for a long time and it came to the point where I realized it might never happen. It perhaps stems from a feeling of inadequacy. I don’t think anyone will be able to write about this album with an honesty and attention to detail without missing something. The unpronounceable Rɡyaɡ̇dźé! might not make it to the top of many AOTY lists this year, apart from the underground, for music that takes a few leaps outside the bounds of what our usual comprehension of what a ‘type’ of music should sound like can be seen as simply an oddity, flash in the pan.

If an album starts on musical hijinks as an inside joke, breaking the 4th wall so to speak, for heading to Bandcamp the track loaded into the player ready to fire is number 9, Major Revision!; it’s a nice way of informing us that what we’re dealing with is a meme of the highest order. Continue reading »

SELFGOD: “LEFT HAND PAGAN”

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Nov 042025
 

(We present Daniel Barkasi’s review of a new album by Pittsburgh-based Selfgod that was released by Veles Records on October 31st.)

Selfgod’s Serge Streltsov (ex-Necrophagia, ex-Automb) has been busy since the release of debut album Born of Death back in February of 2022, with multiple tours under their belt (one that included a stop at our current location of Tampa at the famous Brass Mug), and timing-wise, the band’s next step felt imminent. There were some rumblings, but nothing concrete, until now. Sure enough, the second full-length Left Hand Pagan was announced in mid-October for a quickly approaching Halloween release, this time by way of his own newly formed label, Veles Records. 

To the uninitiated, Selfgod conjures a technical, riff-driven sort of death metal that dabbles in the occasional black metal aesthetic. Think Hate, God Dethroned, Azarath – that sort of approach, coupled with a Pagan thematic presence, which is emphasized further by the new record’s title. As an aside, we explored Streltsov’s personal beliefs and close connection with his home country of Ukraine in an interview we did here at NCS a few years ago, and they’re front and center with this release, which sadly was marked by a personal tragedy for Streltsov during the lead-up (more on that later). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: OROMET — “THE SINKING ISLE”

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Nov 032025
 

(written by Islander)

I’m part of a chat group with some long-distance friends who also write about metal (outside the cohort here at NCS). Some of them had listened to Sacramento-based Oromet’s new album The Sinking Isle before I had. One of them acclaimed it as the best funeral doom album of the year, and others agreed.

I thought that was a bold claim, given that this fall had already brought forth a new album by the old gods Evoken and will soon see a tremendous half of a split by Convocation. But while I couldn’t completely avoid some skepticism (not the band) about the assertion, I was certainly left eager to find out for myself what kindled such enthusiasm.

Not that I wasn’t already pretty taken with Oromet, based on their self-titled debut album from 2023 and their phenomenal cover of Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone” released just this past July (which I had some things to say about here). But still, standing toe-to-toe with those other bands mentioned above (and other fine groups not mentioned) would be no mean feat. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, OCTOBER 2025

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Nov 032025
 

(October 2025 is done and dusted, Gonzo has survived another month, and so he surfaces here to present reviews of four recommended albums released in the year’s 10th month.)

At the risk of sounding cliched, it’s always a depressing reality when Halloween comes to an end. It’s even worse when daylight savings time kicks in on the same weekend, reminding us that the Big Dark is already upon us, signaling the months of snow and rain and subzero temperatures that lurk around the corner.

Choose your coping mechanism as you wish, but whatever they are, I recommend you add these four new releases to distract you from the horrors. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER), MISOTHEIST, DARVAZA, MARTRÖÐ, JZOVCE, ARCANE MARROW, SEDNA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Nov 022025
 

(written by Islander)

Like yesterday, today I had enough time to include a lot of new music and to spill a great volume of words about almost all of it.

For reasons I’ll explain, I’m beginning with a new album that’s well outside the usual parameters of this column, but then launching straight into a sequence of black metal songs (in varying shades of course) that are fantastically thrilling, and sometimes unexpectedly sublime. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MUERTO, LEPRETHERE, ROTTEN SOUND, HEXJAKT, PËRL, MASSA NERA

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 012025
 


artwork by the legend Frank Frazetta

(written by Islander)

I hope those of you who celebrated Halloween got through it with all your fingers intact. Oh wait, that’s a different holiday. But the wish still holds, even if the risks of losing digits might not have been as great. It all depends on where you put them and what you hold and whether some masked goon is firing rubber bullets at your raised fists.

I got through Halloween with all my digits intact, and the three I use for typing have been busily pecking away at this Saturday collection. It comes later than usual because I got a late start and was really confounded in deciding what to pick.

I was pretty thorough in saving links and files this week, which meant there were a fuckload of them staring at me this morning, and I had only sampled a small number of them during the week. I would say that more than half of them were of the black metal persuasion, so I shoved off a lot of those candidates (but not all of them) for tomorrow, which is also therefore guaranteed to be confounding. And there’s a bit of a curveball at the end, of course.

On we go…. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAŁ● — “LUDZIE BŁĄDZĄCY W NOCY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 312025
 

(written by Islander)

The Polish musician (or musicians?) Ø Grémium  has (have?) many guises, creating music under the names of such bands and projects as Ùna, Toska, Nocte, and Etěr (whose debut album of avant-garde death metal we recently reviewed here). And now another name will be added to that list: CAŁ●.

On November 3rd, the debut album of CAŁ● — Ludzie błądzący w nocy (“People wandering in the night”) — will be released by Devoted Art Propaganda in the EU and by Fiadh Productions in the U.S. As for what inspired it, we’ve seen this cryptic question: “Can the band’s ethos be captured with the words: ‘In rapture, against unity, before the guards, it drips inwards, CAŁ●?” And we’ve seen this statement by CAŁ● (translated from the Polish):

Standing on the shoulders of giants: Jan Kasprowicz, Jerzy Żuławski, Józef Jedlicz, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Jorge Luis Borges, Teofil Kwiatkowski, Władysław Wankie, Andrzej Wajda, Jerzy Kawalerowicz

As for the music, we’re premiering a full stream of the album today, preceded by more than a few thoughts about its dark and unsettling and equally invigorating sounds. Continue reading »

YELLOW EYES: “CONFUSION GATE”

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Oct 312025
 

(written by Islander)

In June of last year Gilead Media announced that it would be releasing a collaborative album by Mizmor and Hell (Alluvion, which hit the streets in April 2025) — and explained that it would be one of three final new releases leading up to the label’s closure. Whenever that day comes, it will leave behind for me, and for many, many others, a host of great memories assembled over the course of dozens of records wonderfully curated and provided by Gilead over an almost 20-year period, as well as some equally indelible memories of Gilead Fest.

One more powerful memory is about to be added to all the others.

Today, October 31st, Gilead Media is making a surprise release of the second of those three final albums, Confusion Gate by New York’s Yellow Eyes. It marks a continuation of a relationship between the band and the label that led to Gilead‘s release of Sick With Bloom (2015), Immersion Trench Reverie (2017), and Rare Field Ceiling (2019), as well as vinyl editions for Hammer of Night (2013). I’ve been fortunate to hear Confusion Gate before today, and have some thoughts to share. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEPRAVITY — “AWFUL MANGULATION”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 302025
 

(written by Islander)

It’s always a pleasure to adorn our page with a painting by Paolo Girardi, especially when it’s as monstrously grotesque as the one that leaps off the cover of Depravity’s new album, Bestial Possession.

It’s also always a pleasure to re-connect with the music of this Australian death metal band, which we’ve been covering in our articles beginning in 2011, and to host a premiere of their songs (today’s is our fourth Depravity premiere since 2016).

It’s been a bit of a wait since our last encounter with Depravity, due to the five-year gap between their last album (Grand Malevolence) and this new one. But in the case of Depravity, it’s true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, assuming one is fond of getting musically mauled and mangled.

Speaking of which, the song from Bestial Possession that we’re premiering today is named “Awful Mangulation“. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: GREEN CARNATION

 Interviews  No Responses »
Oct 302025
 


Photos by Lars Gunnar Liestøl

(In September Season of Mist released a new album by the Norwegian progressive metal band Green Carnation, the first album in a three-album trilogy. Below you’ll find Comrade Aleks’ interview with the band’s vocalist Kjetil Nordhus, a discussion that delves into both the new album and the status of the ones to come.)

Initially, the name of the Norwegian band Green Carnation was firmly associated with its founder, Terje Vik Skye, better known as Tchort. He already had a reputation for his work with Emperor, and his new project, at the intersection of doom metal and prog rock, broke the mold. A series of successful albums in the 2000s earned Green Carnation a reputation as an artistic, emotional band with a keen eye for good melodies and well-developed ideas, so their departure from the scene in 2007 was not taken lightly.

However, Green Carnation returned ten years ago, and after a long hiatus, they released not just a new album, but the first part of a trilogy—the progressive and melancholic A Dark Poem Part I: The Shores of Melancholia. The band’s vocalist, Kjetil Nordhus, agreed to shed light on some details of this release, and the opportunity was unmissable. However, not everything is ideal in this world, and the interview could have appeared a few weeks earlier, but the situation was out of my hand. So here we go. Continue reading »

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